Vim users are used to the "modes" like insert, normal, visual. Coming from Vim it feels like Emacs is only in Vim's insert-mode. Having to press ctrl+key just to navigate the screen felt completely wrong to me. All the ctrl/alt keybindings just seems like a recipe for RSI.
However, with the Evil plugin, a Vim user can immediately use Emacs because you're editing with Vim keystrokes. Vim also encourages you to spend as little time in insert-mode, and there are very few commands in Vim that work in insert mode (to be honest, I never use them anyway)
So what you can do is you can tell Evil to drop Vim keybindings when you're in insert-mode (except for ESC) and then.. voila... you're back to Emacs keystrokes, but only while you're in insert-mode (which is what Emacs seems to be about anyway)
;; use Emacs keybindings when in insert mode }:)
(setcdr evil-insert-state-map nil)
(define-key evil-insert-state-map [escape] 'evil-normal-state)
This is the coolest thing ever if you want to learn both editor's commands, or if you're coming from the one/going to the other. (Yeah you can switch mode with Ctrl-z but this is "seamless" for a Vim user)You probably also want the Evil-leader plugin so you can map things like ",f" to find-file and ",h" for help-command, etc.
ido-flex: https://github.com/vic/ido-better-flex.
ido-verical mode (just to make ido to display results in a column instead a row): https://github.com/gempesaw/ido-vertical-mode.el.
Simp.el, that act like sublime text fuzzyfinder : https://github.com/re5et/simp.Also is good to read this post about it: http://ck.kennt-wayne.de/2012/aug/find-project-file-with-fuz....
And this new one called "ag.el" that is "An Emacs frontend to ag, ("the silver searcher" ack replacment)": https://github.com/Wilfred/ag.el.
Play with them and see if they can be useful to you ;).
One favorite tweak of mine for file finders like this in general: rewrite the dir listing to use "git ls-files -co --exclude-standard". This obviously only works in git projects (similar commands exist for mercurial I think), but is really fast and most of the time is exactly what I want.